Google’s Gmail disrupted again; users lose contacts

SAN FRANCISCO: Google Inc’s Web-based email service suffered its second high-profile technical problem this month as users reported difficulty accessing their contacts.

Reports of the glitch flooded the Twitter microblogging service on Thursday, with users posting comments highlighting and griping about the situation.

A message appearing at the top of the Gmail product for some people stated that Gmail “is temporarily unable to access your contacts. You may experience issues while this persists.” Google provided details on the site of a workaround which it said would allow Web users to tap into their email accounts.

A Google representative was not immediately available to comment. Earlier this month, most Google email users were unable to access its service for more than an hour.

Google said the outage was due to some of its routers becoming overloaded during a routine upgrade.

Google's Gmail disrupted again; users lose contacts

Google called that outage a “big deal” on its official blog. On Tuesday, Google’s news website experienced a nearly two-hour outage.

The disruption came just over three weeks after an outage which left millions of users without the free Web-based email service for more than an hour and a half.

Google blamed server maintenance for the September 1 Gmail outage and apologized for the disruption. Google also suffered technical problems in May, leaving millions of people unable to use popular services such as its main search page, as well as Gmail and Google News.

Google also experienced a breakdown of Gmail, which has tens of millions of users, in February which lasted a few hours.